


Tartmaking Gone Wrong

by AriesOnMars



Series: Sticky Candy Blood [1]
Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Blood Drinking, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 09:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12078036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesOnMars/pseuds/AriesOnMars
Summary: Gumball just wanted to finish making the royal tarts, he didn't want to have to deal with a hungry vampire tapping at the window. But feeding her makes things go from annoying to worse and the two of them are both left miserable and coping.





	Tartmaking Gone Wrong

There was a scratching on the kitchen window and Gumball ignored it. Scratching turned to tapping, and with a disgruntled noise he continued to pretend he couldn’t hear the noise. The tapping got more intense until it was finally a banging that was rattling the sugar glass. He gave up and went to the window to fling it open. He wasn’t surprised at the monstrous form in front of him, a wicked looking beast like a wolf with a flat nose covered in coarse, black hair with drool dripping from fangs and blue-black lips nearly hidden in the dark of the night.  
  
“What is it?!” Gumball yelled, and as though that was enough to hurt it the beast fell over on it’s side with a whine.  
  
“So, so… hungry…” the monster shuddered as it spoke.  
  
“Then go drink a bucket of paint,” Gumball said as he shut the window firmly again. He’d just barely turned around when there was an unholy screeching sound behind him, and when he turned he saw huge claws scraping at the window pane. It was either put up with the noise, wait until the window broke, or make it stop. He chose to make it stop, and he went to the window to open it again. “Will you stop that? I’m trying to bake!”  
  
Instead of an answer the beast hauled itself up and started to push through the window. The shoulders caught and it paused, then changed. The bulk of the body melted away, getting thinner, smaller, the hair fading away until the wolf was gone and a young woman in a black and grey plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off and shredded blue jeans was laying on his counter.  
  
“Get off of there, you’re filthy!” Gumball yelled and pulled Marceline from the counter. She wasn’t actually any dirtier than she usually was, but she always had a smell like freshly dug up dirt on her.  
  
“I’m so hungry, I need something to eat,” Marceline whined and she went limp in Gumball’s arms, making him sag and grunt until he had to let go of her and just drop her on the floor.  
  
“No you don’t, I’ve seen you hungry before. You go nuts,” Gumball huffed and rubbed an arm. He wasn’t particularly strong, and he was fairly certain Marceline could make herself weigh more out of spite without changing her physical form.  
  
“Oh come on, you have plenty of red in here,” Marceline lost some of her play-acting about being starving, but she stayed on the floor. It was buffed clean twice a day every day, it wasn’t like it was any dirtier to lay there than to sit at the table.  
  
“Those are for tarts, not for you,” Gumball said sharply. In response Marceline groaned loud and rolled onto her back, spread out with her eyes closed and mouth open wide so she could moan and complain. Gumball tried to continue on without paying her any mind, but after the fifth loud reintegration of ‘I’m so hungry, you need to feed me’ he threw his whisk down and gave up. “Fine! Fine, I’ll feed you! Are you happy?!”  
  
Marceline laughed without bothering to open her eyes, “Yeah, pretty much.”  
  
There was a rattle of utensils and footsteps as Gumball came over to her, a strange noise she couldn’t place—a gasp? That’s weird—and then something warm dripped over her lips. She stuck her tongue out, licking it, and she didn’t need to see it to know the color of it. Deep, deep red. So red it was almost black. She breathed in the smell of sugary redness and sat up, her mouth open and the red dripping into her easier now. Sometimes a drop would land on her cheek or chin and dribble down, but not often. When she opened her eyes she expected to see Gumball with a bowl or spoon or something like that. She didn’t expect him to be holding a knife, she didn’t expect the red to be coming out of his wrist.  
  
“What?!” was all she got out as she jerked away. Gumball moved to set the knife down on the counter and hold his wrist to stem the flow, but dark, dark red still leaked out from between his fingers and dripped on the floor—and what a waste that was. Too much of a waste. Marceline shook the thought away.  
  
“Are you full now?” Gumball huffed.  
  
“I’m never full,” Marceline answered and she got up, then floated into the air. “What the heck, you have plenty of filling for those dumb tarts, why didn’t you just give me that?”  
  
“Because I still have to make those dumb tarts,” Gumball answered and he held up his wrist awkwardly. “And other than tart supplies I don’t have much in my kitchen. So if you’re not done keep drinking until I don’t have to worry about you sneaking my supplies away.”  
  
“You get way too into baking,” Marceline said, but she came closer and took his hand, and when Gumball let go of his wrist she dipped her head down to lick at the wound and lap up the leaking blood. Even this was candy, sticky sweet syrup colored a dark deep red. Red always tasted a little different depending on where it came from and what shade it was, but a shade this dark would usually be bitter. Having it sweet was strange and new and she held his wrist closer to suck on the cut until the blood was flowing freely again.  
  
“And you get way too into being a nuisance,” Gumball said. “Besides, this is the wrong time if you want to try to bum tarts from me. You should have waited until tomorrow when I knew which ones were the rejects. Or, you know, actually show up to the back rubbing ceremony for once.”  
  
Marceline gave a discontented growl from behind his wrist and Gumball couldn’t help but chuckle at it. He started to tug his hand back away from her but she floated closer to him and reached up to grip he front of his clothing hard enough her fingers ripped through it. He had, thankfully, forgone his usual royal dress for a simply shirt and pants covered with an apron, well aware he was going to end up a mess at the end of everything. Still, though, he liked that apron.  
  
“Oh come on now, really?” Gumball frowned at her, but Marceline was still only focused on drinking, swallowing down sticky sweet red blood until Gumball felt lightheaded. She was slowly changing without thinking of it, her ears growing and her hair getting longer, her nose upturning and flattening until it looked like a leaf.  
  
“Aah, come on, I’ve never seen you want this much before,” he said. He winced when he felt her forked tongue probing the cut and her teeth pressing against the skin on his wrist. “Careful! Don’t stick your tongue in, it feels weird—and watch your teeth!”  
  
“Sire! What’s going on?” A voice squeaked out from just outside the kitchen as a gumdrop helper he’d sent for came in with a bowl overflowing with strawberries. She stopped, stared at the two of them, them dropped the bowl of fruit and ran out screaming, “Monster! Monster eating the Prince!”  
  
“Wait!” Gumball held up his free hand, but when he tried to give chase Marceline held him firmly in place and growled low. Gumball huffed at that and muttered to himself, “Well, I suppose that’s accurate, all considering.”  
  
He looked around, he hadn’t thought she’d actually want to drain him dry but with someone running away screaming she hadn’t stopped and it was seeming more and more like she wanted to eat until there was nothing left anymore. After another minute of Marceline feeding, licking at the wound and sucking on it to encourage the blood to keep flowing along, he did all he could think of. He pinched her flat-leaf nose closed until she was squirming, unwilling to breathe through her mouth and unable to breathe through her nose until she finally jerked back with a gasp. He pulled back from her, stuck with her grip on his apron, but he quickly shucked it off to get some distance between them and to rummage in the supplies he had out on the counter. He found what he wanted, powdered sugar, and scooped up a handful to rub it into the cut to stop the bleeding. The sugar and cornstarch would help with his healing too.  
  
“What was that? I can barely stand now,” Gumball complained as he turned back to Marceline. She’d gone from floating in the air to kneeling on the ground, her arms around her belly and her hair over her face. She groaned and curled up a little more and Gumball glared at her, “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that you’re still hungry.”  
  
Marceline shook her head slowly and then whined. She ended up falling over onto her face on the floor, curling up into a smaller ball, then smaller, smaller, until she was growing wings and her clothes were changing to fur as she transformed into a small bat, “Nooo… I think I ate too much…”  
  
“Seriously?” Gumball frowned and went to her. He started to bend down, but the movement and loss of blood made him get a bad case of vertigo and he stumbled, nearly stepping on her. When he recovered she was still curled up, but she was about as small as she could get now, and he went down onto his knees carefully and slowly so he could scoop her up in his hands. “Wow, you really do look terrible.”  
  
Marceline narrowed her tiny eyes at him, “All your fault.”  
  
“I’m not the one that told you to drink yourself sick,” Gumball huffed and he started to get up. His head swam and he went back down to his knees. “Ok, we’re just… going to stay on the floor for a minute.”  
  
“I hate your floor,” Marceline grumbled. Gumball just rolled his eyes.  
  
“You liked it just fine a couple minutes ago. You were rolling around on it,” Gumball moved to stand up again, badly wobbly and having to hold still until his vision cleared, but he was up.  
  
“Uuurgh,” Marceline moaned, as loudly and aggressively as she could in her current state. “Don’t move around so much, I’m going to hurl.”  
  
“What? No!” Gumball startled. “Don’t regurgitate my own blood onto me, that’ll be horrifying!”  
  
Marceline pushed her tiny, fuzzy head between his fingers so she could partially dangle over the side of his hands and gave a sizable burp for her tiny stature that ended with a pitiful little hiccup. Gumball jumped at that and looked around, really not wanting to have a tiny vampire be sick on him. How much would even come out? He felt like she drank pints, but she looked like she couldn’t hold more than a thimble of anything in her tiny belly now. Would it just be a couple drops or would she turn into a disgusting, horrifying fountain that defied physics? He was worried it was the latter and he scrambled to the counters, tripping over his own feet and hitting his chin hard on the end of it, but he managed to get Marceline onto the edge of the sink without just chucking her into it.  
  
“Here, you throw up in here!” he said, attempting firmness but only managing to sound frantic and afraid. For once Marceline didn’t make fun of him for that and she just turned to lean over into the sink with another moan. It was a testament to how awful she really felt. As Gumball stood up on shaky legs he dragged over a dishcloth to drape over her like a blanket. Marceline was shivering as she moaned, then she started making awful gagging noises that the sink amplified until Gumball thought he was going to throw up with her.  
  
“Just—please throw up and get it over with,” he pleaded.

“Nooo,” Marceline whined between her unsuccessful attempts at retching. “I hate throwing up.”  
  
“I hate it too, but you’ll feel better after,” Gumball tried to be soothing and he rubbed a finger against her little back through the dishcloth. He thought he was doing pretty good at being comforting considering he lost half his blood and bruised half his face.  
  
“You hate throwing up, or you hate me throwing up?” Marceline asked as she turned her beady little black eyes up to him.  
  
Gumball paused, bit the inside of his cheek, and then answered, “Just throw up in my sink.”  
  
“Noooo,” Marceline moaned as she pulled the dish cloth over herself to cocoon herself in the soft cloth. Now she both didn’t want to throw up because it felt bad, but also out of spite.  
  
“Come on, get out of there,” Gumball frowned and he started tugging at corners of the dishcloth to see if he could shake her loose.  
  
“My ear!” Marceline cried out when he pinched a fold in the fabric.  
  
“Sorry!” Gumball cried. He jerked his hands back, and then nearly tumbled backwards from the movement. He had to grip the edge of the counter so he wouldn’t fall over completely. “Just, ah… Ok, well what will make you feel better? Ginger ale?”  
  
“No more drinking…” Marceline moaned.  
  
“Ok, well, uhm…” Gumball frowned. There wasn’t a lot he knew to do for an upset stomach other than giving someone something to drink or eat to settle it.  
  
“Being sick makes me feel gross… Maybe I can get clean,” Marceline offered as she peeked out from her dishcloth blanket.  
  
“You don’t think heat will just make everything worse?” Gumball frowned. Marceline whined loud and flopped onto her back, kicking her little legs out from under the edge of the dishcloth and probably flapping her wings from the way the rest of it moved.  
  
“Stop, stop, stop!” Gumball yelled. He didn’t want her throwing up on herself because of a tantrum. “Fine, I’ll get you a bath. Just, ah, hold on.”  
  
He looked around at the kitchen, frowning, and then—using the counter as a crutch the whole time—he went to fetch a kettle and get it partially filled with water. Just enough for a mug of tea, then onto the stove with it, and he looked over his mugs and bowls and eventually reached over to pinch one of Marceline’s little feet gently to tug it up and see again just how small she was under the dishcloth. He didn’t trust trying to pick the dishcloth off of her again.  
  
“Hey!” she squeaked, and he set her back down to pick out a mug and put it near her.  
  
“Alright, so how hot do you want your bath?” Gumball asked as he reached with the back of his hand towards the teakettle to hold it near the metal surface and gauge how hot the water was getting.  
  
“Scalding,” Marceline answered.  
  
“I’m going to go with warm,” Gumball said. Marceline whined again, but he was already pouring the water into the mug. “Get out of your blanket if you want a bath.”  
  
“Mmmhnh,” Marceline just grumbled and rolled around in the fabric for a bit, then she finally started wiggling free of it. She didn’t look that much like an actual bat Gumball mused. She looked more like a little bat-demon, which made sense. She sat down on the bunched up dishcloth with a huff and raised up her tiny arms, staring up at him expectantly with beady little eyes. It took him a moment but Gumball finally got the hint and scooped her up gently in his hands—leaning on the counter with his elbows so he wouldn’t take another tumble—and set her down in the mug. She fit in it pretty well, although he had misjudged how much water she’d need and the extra spilled out over the rim and onto the counter.  
  
“You know, a normal person uses words to ask for what they want,” Gumball said as he settled to lean a little more comfortably on the counter. One his arms rested in the warm water puddle and he made a face, but it would have taken too much effort to move so he just left it there.  
  
“A normal person doesn’t feed someone else their blood,” Marceline grumbled, but despite that she looked fairly content in her tiny bath.  
  
“Lucky for you, hm?” Gumball said. He looked around the counter and picked up a teaspoon to dip into the mug and pour some of the water over her tiny head.  
  
“You’re so weird, dude,” Marceline closed her eyes as water poured over her, and she reached up to rub her tiny hands over her fuzzy head, effectively smooshing the fluffy fur down.  
  
“You like weird,” Gumball said. He kept slowly pouring water over Marceline using the teaspoon until she seemed done with the little shower. “Feeling any better?”  
  
“Little bit,” Marceline admitted. “I’d probably feel better if the water was hotter.”  
  
“You might also throw up in hotter water,” Gumball said as he set the teaspoon beside the mug. “You’ll have to just settle for warm until you’re back to normal.”  
  
Marceline sank down in the water until she was blowing bubbles out of her little fanged mouth. Gumball just snorted at her and rubbed over her wet head with a finger, making the fur stick up all over the place. It was a nice, quiet moment after the rough day of nonstop baking, and Marceline hadn’t been the only person to come in and bother him. Like her there were people, Candy Kingdom residents and not, who wanted to peer at him working and see if they could sneak something when his back was turned. Peppermint Butler had been good about keeping the less dedicated to mischief out, but likely this lapse in his guard had been because the Tart Toter had showed up early, ranting and raving and dripping meringue foam, and Gumball had sent him to distract the mad cookie and find somewhere else to keep him occupied.  
  
A pleasant moment however must always come to an end, and this one ended abruptly with a loud slam from the door to the kitchen. Gumball jerked to stand up suddenly and his world spun again. He stumbled, tried to grab onto the counter, missed, and ended up in a pink, groaning heap on the ground. Fiona came charging in, sword brandished, with Cake at her heels, and yelled, “Where is it?”  
  
“Where’s what?!” Gumball cried, his hands up over his head, at least as well as they could be while he was on the ground.  
  
“The monster!” Fiona said, now looking from the walls to the ceiling for an unseen foe. “The Candy people are freaking out, someone said a monster was attacking and eating you.”  
  
“Oh,” Gumball relaxed and settled his hands on his chest. His heart was still pounding, but at least now he could calm down a little. He didn’t handle being startled well. “There was, it’s in the mug on the counter.”  
  
“What?” Cake looked from a suspicious corner of the walls to look back at Gumball at that. She’d grown nearly to fit in the entire kitchen on her and her sister’s entrance, but even so her paws managed to keep from knocking off any of the tarts that lined the counters and were cooling on the tables.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
The tiny voice caught Fiona’s attention and she went over to look at the mug on the counter, and the tiny bat in it and now trying to haul her itty bitty body out over the edge of it. Fiona sheathed her sword as she watched the little thing eventually give up on pulling her waterlogged body out of the porcelain mug with a whine. “Marceline? You were… were you eating Gumball?”  
  
“He started it,” Marceline complained and she tried to point over the rim of the mug to the floor.  
  
“It sounds worse than it is. Can you give me a hand up?” Gumball said as he held a hand up. Fiona took it and hauled him up easily, and Gumball stumbled and had to slump on the counter so he wouldn’t end up on the floor again. “Thank you. Anyway, she was hungry and I just gave her something to eat.”  
  
“Ok, but how does that—what the heck!” Fiona jerked her hand back when she saw the stain of red there, then looked at Gumball’s hand. The plaster the powdered sugar had made on his cut wrist had broken and dark, sweet blood was oozing between the cracks and down over his palm.  
  
“Ah, don’t worry about that,” Gumball said as he pressed his hand over the cut with a slightly-too-cheerful smile, trying to hide the mess of blood where the heroine wouldn’t see it. “It’s nothing,”  
  
“The Master Baker managed to nick himself,” Marceline said. Gumball and Fiona both looked to the voice, and Gumball sputtered at the vampire perched on the counter, twirling her hair and twisting it to wring out some water. Gone was the pitiful little bat taking a bath in one of his tea mugs, Marceline looked like nothing had happened at all. “Want to know what he tastes like?”  
  
“Don’t be gross,” Fiona huffed with a faint tinge to her cheeks.  
  
“I can’t believe you, you were just—just—!” Gumball stood up again, too fast, and he tried to ignore the gray fog taking over his vision and keep arguing with where he thought Marceline should be. “You were fine—you looked so little and sick and you said you were—why do I even—you!”  
  
He tried to argue but he was doing a terrible job, made all the worse he was arguing with a spice rack slightly to the left of where Marceline actually was. He stumbled back, tripped over his own feet, but this time he managed to keep from landing on the floor thanks to Cake shrinking down so he could flop back onto her back and stay standing.  
  
“Uurgh… Thank, ah, thank you,” Gumball mumbled. He closed his eyes and waited for the world to stop spinning before opening them again. “I may need to lay down.”  
  
“How long have you been baking, anyway?” Cake asked as she shifted into a more doughnutty shape to support Gumball better since gravity was still determined to drag him down to the ground.  
  
“Probably too long, eh, Gideon? I can get him to bed where he belongs,” Marceline teased as she floated over and moved to scoop Gumball out of the ring of Cake. The prince huffed and grumbled, but he let himself be picked up and he didn’t do much more than stay still and mostly uncomfortable when he was in her arms. He was fairly used to just being picked up by now, Fiona could do it, the Ice King could do it, most people could really. He was a surprisingly light lump of gum and sugar. Marceline turned back to Fiona and Cake when she had Gumball settled in her arms, “Hey Cake, you cook, right?”  
  
“Yeah?” Cake eyed the vampire warily, her tail preemptively puffing.  
  
“Want to help the prince here finish up his royal tarts?”  
  
“What?” Cake and Gumball said it together, but Cake was obviously much more enthusiastic about the idea.  
  
“I’m almost finished,” Gumball argued and he tried to wriggle free, but now that he was actually being carried he couldn’t squirm free and he was trapped.  
  
“Then just tell her what to do to finish up,” Marceline shrugged and Gumball was jostled back against her chest. “Cake can handle it.”  
  
“Darn right I can,” Cake was smiling determinedly and trying to get this chance to say she baked royal tarts would take more effort than Gumball had left in him.  
  
“Alright, alright,” he sighed and ended up relaxing in Marceline’s arms some. “When the timer goes off I need you to turn the tarts in the oven around, set the timer for another seven minutes, and then when it goes off they’re done. Let them cool completely and then there’s whipped cream and cored strawberries in the fridge. Just decorate them like the others, or I can—hey!”  
  
Gumball wiggled and struggled as Marceline floated away from the kitchen, carrying him off and then up into the higher floors of the castle, bypassing the stairs almost entirely in some places. From down in the kitchen Fiona’s voice came out, “Seriously, baking? That sounds so boring…”  
  
“Don’t you worry, Fiona, we can make this fun!”  
  
Gumball whined in the back of his throat pitifully as he heard the exchange.  
  
“Turn tarts, cool tarts, decorate tarts, it’s not that hard,” Marceline said.  
  
“It’s not that it’s hard, it’s that it’s precise,” Gumball said. “I should have finished them, if I go downstairs I can—”  
  
“Pass out on the floor. Sure you want to do that?”  
  
Gumball frowned at that and huffed, “And you. I thought you were sick! I can’t believe I fell for that.”  
  
Marceline snorted, “Was? I still am! I just didn’t want Fiona seeing it. Now don’t wiggle around, I still feel like I need to hurl.”  
  
Gumball went very still at that revelation and started up at her wide-eyed, “Don’t you dare be sick on me.”  
  
“Calm down, it’s not going to happen,” Marceline kicked the door to Gumball’s room open, then winced and shuddered. She held him closer and she managed a small, wet burp before she kept floating towards the bed. She was a lot slower and less steady now. “Maybe. Even if I do it’s mostly your blood.”  
  
“Mostly?”  
  
“There’s some crayons in there too,” Marceline admitted. Gumball let out a small whine that was steadily growing until she finally dumped him into his bed.  
  
“Oh thank the—Marceline!” Gumball yelped, his moment of sagging back into the bed broken when the vampire dropped onto him. She was a lot heavier than she looked, undead muscle packed so tight and dense she could just shove her way through a brick wall if she wanted to. If she really wanted to she could shove her way through Gumball. He shoved at her but she was pretty sturdily on him now that she no longer had to either carry him or pretend she was fine.  
  
“I feel like garbage,” Marceline whined.  
  
“Crushing me isn’t going to help with that,” Gumball pushed at her again. “Just, you can hang out up here with me—oof—get on the other side of the bed.”  
  
Marceline shifted and crawled over him, making Gumball feel like he know knew what it felt like to be under a rolling pin, and she settled on the other half of the bed. She was doing her best to look worse for wear, and her miserable face melted into something truly horrific. She was akin to a rotting corpse, skin peeling back from her face and appearing to fall off in chunks, her eyes going milky white and her tongue lolling out from between her fangs, fat and bloated.  
  
Gumball carefully rolled on his side to face her, “I’m glad I’m not the one sick or you’d be making me throw up too.”  
  
The spell wasn’t complete, after all, Marceline still smelled like dirt and not like the rotting, putrid mess she was trying to make herself look like. She was still for a moment, then the rotting skin rolled back into place and she was left as her usual self, although now that he was so close to her she did look tense and uncomfortable even when she smiled at him.  
  
“I can still smell your blood,” she said. “I still want it.”  
  
“You’ll make yourself sicker if you drink more,” Gumball said. He shifted, bringing his hands up to the pillow to rest them like he usually did to sleep. Marceline was staring at the tacky blood on his hand and wrist as the wound healed again. Gumball looked at the gash on his arm, then shifted to scoot closer carefully, holding his hand near her face. “Don’t drink it, you tried to chug my blood before and that was horrible. For both of us. Just lick.”  
  
Marceline paused, she didn’t want to feel worse, but at the same time there t was, sticky sweet red oozing smearing on the bed linens and that was just a waste, a huge and horrible waste. She nudged closer, sniffing, her newly wide and flat nose taking in the smell of the blood before she flicked her forked tongue over it. She was slow this time, just lapping up the blood that oozed out. Slowly the blood stopped oozing, and instead of biting the injury she moved to lick over his palm and fingers to get up the dried blood there.  
  
“Sort of feels nice like this,” Gumball murmured as she relaxed. The touches were soothing, and the blood had stopped leaking out. He was healing now as long as he took it easy. Slowly Marceline came to a point where she was satisfied and she relaxed back into the bed to doze for a moment as Gumball finally closed his eyes to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Wondering why I named Gumball Gideon? Honestly I just wanted to give him a first name, and I wanted it to follow the same phonetic style as Bubblegum's, meaning it had to be a three-syllable name that started with G. I was going through a list of names and saw that Gideon meant "feller of trees" and I thought that was pretty appropriate considering Bubblegum's great-uncle Gumball who cleared a forest.
> 
> * Originally the story referenced the Ice Queen, but it was changed to the Ice King later.


End file.
